Page 108 of Everything All at Once

“Are you okay?” he said.

“I don’t know. I think so. Are you?”

“I don’t know either.”

“Maybe we could talk about it sometime? So, you know, I don’t have to get the insight to your feelings via an essay in a literary magazine?”

“I’ll think about it,” he said, winking, grabbing a bag of pretzels from the counter.

I hung back a minute. I went upstairs to my room and took the last of Aunt Helen’s letters from my desk. I thought I was finally ready to read what she had to say, what she’d chosen to leave me with. The last letter. But not the last of Aunt Helen.

Lottie,

You’re on your own.

Thank you for tying up my loose ends, putting the final pieces of my puzzle together. I wish I could thank you in person, but alas, one thing life has taught me: you rarely get what you want.

(Something here about getting what you need, naturally.)

I have no grand last bit of wisdom to impart. I write this with a hand shaking and weak from chemotherapy and lack of sleep.

The other night I started reading the red journal over again, and I thought: My goodness. My little Lottie is this age now.

Write as much of it down as you can. It’s sometimes nice to remember.

We are so alike in some ways. I know you have the same voice that follows you around, that you can’t seem to get away from. The edge-of-sleep voice. The dark-and-quiet voice.

But you will learn to silence it, Lottie.

You will learn to push it to the side.

Even this, me being gone, will get easier.

And besides, now it’s time to let a little bit of me go.

Throw my ashes, Lottie. Into the ocean—from the cliff we used to go to together. Have a picnic, have some fun, try not to let it be so heavy. (I’ve written some foods down on the back; living vicariously through this image while I can’t stomach anything much stronger than bread.)

I hope I was an okay aunt. I hope you knew that from the very first time I held your little baby body in my arms, I was hooked.

A whole lifetime of loving you feels like more than a fair exchange for immortality. Don’t you think?

—H.

I put the letter down on my desk.

My aunt could be a million things.

A little selfish.

A little bossy.

A little presumptuous.

But she was also right; it was about time I started figuring things out for myself.

I went back downstairs to the living room. Sam was winning by a mile in what Amy kept referring to as beginner’s luck.

I imagined this night stretching on for all infinity, lasting forever.

I imagined that somewhere, in another universe, it did.

Next to me, Sam bought his fourth railroad.

On the TV, Alvin and Margo sat in the dusty foyer of the house in the middle of the woods and wondered if they would ever see their parents again.

Don’t worry, you two. I’ve read the last book. You do.